The rumor we reported yesterday concerning Seagate acquiring an apparently money bleeding hard drive business from Samsung is in fact true. Today, both companies will officially announce the joint venture in which we’ll see Seagate taking over all hard disk technology and operations from Samsung. The deal will reportedly cost Seagate $1.375 billion — %50 cash and %50 stock — and also secure Seagate a more solid path in the SSD market moving forward as they will be supplied with Samsung flash memory. The deal is expected to close in late 2011.
Now that the details are out, it’s reassuring to see Samsung still maintaining their SSD ambitions as that’s where the future as at. Not to mention, Samsung’s consumer line of SSDs are actually very good. Here’s to hoping Seagate can continue providing the top-tier performance Samsung HDDs (or at least adopt the technology) have come to be known for.
Floppy disks are pretty useless these days unless of course you’re looking for a relic of a paper weight or holding on to them for future value. There is a third, much more useful option however. Replace the guts with a USB drive like this guy Charles did. It’s a tad thicker than a single floppy because he had to use two disks stacked together so it everything would fit. Though he managed to get the flash drive’s activity light to light up with the floppy’s old lock switch cutout. Pretty nifty.
While many of you out there may be tech-fiends, living and breathing each every new gadget that is announced/released, not all of us can be as well versed in the digital way. But more likely however, is that you have a family member or two that always turns to you for tech help. Love it or hate it, you’re the savior. So when that particular person comes to you asking about an easy way to remotely access their photos, you can now respond with a concise and easy answer…
Just when you thought the end had been reached, when platter-based hard drives could improve no more, Toshiba comes along and proves us all wrong. A prototype technology called “bit-patterned” media breaks up the usual continuous surface of your typical hard disk into small sections. So small in fact that the current ~540GB/sq. in. currently enjoyed in hard drive technology will pail in comparison. With bit-patterned technology, the stakes rise to 2.5TB/sq. in.!
For SSD supporters, Toshiba is simply delaying the inevitable. To some extent, that’s true. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t be excited to see a 10TB hard drive for $300 while equivalent storage options in SSD dressings cost 4x-5x more. As it seems, platter-based hard drive still have a bit of fight left in them. Look for the new tech to drop in 2013 if prototypes fair well.
Lookin’ to cram the the most amount of data into the smallest space? Look no further than Hitachi with their new Z7K320 Deskstar hard drive.
Measuring a scant 7mm thick, this 2.5-inch drive is the claimed “world’s first” drive to spin at 7,200RPM. Data hoarders need to look elsewhere however, as these new drives will only come in 320GB capacities. Not exactly the roomiest of mobile-based drives anymore.
Next up on the chopping block — 1.8″ 7,200 RPM drives. Yum.
I’m not exactly a “pack rat” per say. But if you stopped by my house and took a peek inside my desk drawers, you’d final all kinds of miscellaneous computer parts, cords, and adapters. I’ve amassed quite the collection. Naturally, upgrading a computer here and there will result in a few extra hard drives. In the case of upgrading laptop hard drives more than is usual, I have a couple collecting dust. Why not put them to good use?
Normally when I want something off of a hard drive that’s not hooked up, I just swap drives in and out of my external enclosure as needed. But the new USB 3.0 compatible 2.5″ external hard drive enclosure by Century has me thinking it’s about time to pick up another enclosure. Instantly taking any 2.5″ drive you may have and turning it into a USB 3.0 “Super Speed” drive sure is tempting. Not to mention, the case itself is only $48 USD, so it’s relatively cheap too. Kind of like a “freebie” if you’re having trouble justifying dropping nearly 50 bones on the enclosure.
The enclosure isn’t shipping until April 12th, but online outlets will gladly take your money now. And just in case you were concerned, USB 2.0 is supported as a safe fall back option. Readying the wallet?
Who doesn’t want a faster computer? When I help people out with computer issues, the thing I hear most often is “how can you make my computer faster?” A hard alone isn’t going to do much, unfortunately. But it is one area that in the near future that will make at least a small noticeable difference, especially with 6Gbps SATA 3.0 on board. Whipping around at 7200RPM’s, Seagate bills their new 2TB Constellation ES monster drives as “enterprise class”, signaling that those who loathe ever turning off their machines should be happy as a clam with these new drives.
A few added bonuses by Seagate include: PowerChoice technology in order to make the drives as energy sipping as possible, yet still speedy as ever; government-grade encryption, and improved cooling.
Judging by past announcements and rollouts being a tad further apart than we like, I doubt we’ll see this new 2TB behemoth in particular before mid-summer. I’m always optimistic though. Who’s looking for a mass storage upgrade?
Even though Windows 7 is the current go-to option for Windows OS’s, may people for many reasons still rely on XP day in and day out to get their work done. Being the fact that XP itself is inching towards a decade old, at some point compatibility issues will arise. And speak of the devil, a new issue is in fact cropping up. It all has to do with hard drives and hard drive formats. It’s really a pretty simple thing — new hard drives have 4k sectors, old drives (pre-Windows XP era) have 512B.
The reason for the huge jump is that back in the day, 512B sectors was perfect for 10-100GB hard drives, but now that low end drives are even pushing 500GB and top-o-the line drives are soaring up to 2TB means we need something more efficient. I say efficient because with all of those little 512b sectors required a considerable amount of extra storage space for error codes. (Even wonder why so much of your hard drive capacity magically disappears after formatting?)
That new expanded 4k sector size means more space for actual storage on new drives and overall more efficient and speedy performance. For XP users, the “fun” begins. In order for XP to use drives formatted with the new 4k size, the drive will have to emulate the old 512B sectors. For reads, their won’t be any real noticeable difference. It’s only when you get all write happy that you could see up to a 10% decrease in drive performance as the emulation mode more or less makes it so that each 1 and 0 has to be written twice. All in all, only those building custom computers with more performance oriented goals will probably notice the speed decrease.
The simple solution is again, upgrade to Windows Vista or 7. But not everyone can do that. Be warned though, whether you’re ready or not, this new format will become standard by 2011. Get ready.
I’m one for unique, creative, and downright “your jaw hit’s the floor it’s so cool” gadgets. When someone takes the time to blend various objects or modify gadgets into new things that are completely off the wall, it’s a testament to how much of a nerd they really are. Say someone were to take your normal spinning hard drive, place a few LED’s behind the spinning platter, cut out some numbers, and time it all so the LED’s lit up at precisely the right moment as to show the current time — the result would be nothing short of amazing, no? For one modder, “Svofsk”, that very thing has been accomplished. Let me tell you, it may not seem like much — timing some LED’s and all — but when you stop and think about how fast hard drives spin and how fast (and precise) such LED on/off transitions have to be, well, it becomes pretty mind boggling. But don’t let my senseless babbling be the only source you have for this. Check out the vid below…
Learn how to make it yourself, compliments of Svofski’s website with very, very detailed schematics.
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The rumor we reported yesterday concerning Seagate acquiring an apparently money bleeding hard drive business from Samsung is in fact true. Today, both companies will officially announce the joint venture in which we’ll see Seagate taking over all hard disk technology and operations from Samsung. The deal will reportedly cost Seagate $1.375 billion — %50 cash and %50 stock — and also secure Seagate a more solid path in the SSD market moving forward as they will be supplied with Samsung flash memory. The deal is expected to close in late 2011.
